Blood and Seawater
by Wolfychann
Summary: A modern girl falls into the Caribbean to find that pirate life is nasty, brutish, and short. But when she and Jack Sparrow must fight side by side, will all that change? Well, no. But it's fun to read about anyway. COMPLETE.
1. Stranded!

We take time for granted, always assume that it's eternally locked in a steady forward march. That's an illusion. Time stops, and starts again, slows down and speeds up, and sometimes runs altogether backward. It's nothing to us, usually, because our thoughts and lives are bound to time, are within it. We are like words on a page; though the paper may be creased and flipped and folded, the letters keep their order. Now and then, however, the page tears.

I should tell you about myself, so you can picture me and maybe understand more; it'll save me from having to awkwardly describe myself by telling you how I looked in a mirror or something. My name was Holly Black. I was a girl, eighteen years old but looking rather younger, very short and a bit too wide. I lifted weights and was thickly muscled for a girl, but there was some fat on the muscle as well, I'll admit. My skin was white and freckled; my eyes were blue-green; my hair was bottle red, short, and curly in a scraggly way.

My story starts nearly three hundred years after it ends, in the year 2004. I was a film major at Whitman College in Walla Walla, the wheat-and-onion flavored armpit of Washington State. My life was ordinary, boring; procrastinating papers, bitching about the dorm food, trying and mostly failing to shoot goofy little student films. Then, one day, I was in the bathroom, shaving my legs in the sink with shorts on, and then I was underwater in the middle of the ocean. There was no swirling portal, no rush of wind, nothing so theatrical. I was just in once place, and then in another.

The sting of the seawater made my eyes and mouth shut reflexively, but it took me a moment to realise that I was drowning. The razor was still in my hand, and I dropped it as I kicked in a direction I hoped was upward. Part of the sink and floor must have come with me as well, because I brushed against something smooth and hard sinking in the water around me.

The swim was taking too long. My ears were in agony from the pressure and I didn't even know if I was even heading toward the surface. I opened my eyes, but it was all a blur and the salt in the water burned. Eventually I had no strength left. I had to take a breath. I was awake enough to know that breathing was suicide, but my body wasn't. Against my will, I gasped, and my lungs filled painfully with water. Just then, my fingertips broke the surface.

I coughed up water, not all of it, but enough to get some air into myself. Enough to live. Treading water, I wiped my eyes, coughed some more, and looked around. I was in the middle of the ocean. And I mean the middle. There was the water in gentle waves, and a bright blue sky, and that was all. With no sign of land or a boat, I could do nothing. So I did. 

I floated on my back, legs sunk underwater, keeping afloat with as little effort as possible. Sometimes I thought of sharks, and imagined I felt the sweep of great tails beneath me, the brush of rough scales against my exposed legs. I screamed sometimes, and cried in fear of death, but soon I had neither voice nor tears. My throat burned with thirst.

Night fell. I didn't sleep, but floated in the darkness, so I saw the moment when dawn broke. And it was a beautiful dawn indeed, because when the first soft gray light crept round the horizon it revealed a dark shadow in the distance. I had drifted during the night, drifted within reach of hope. The currents were still carrying me toward the shadow, and I swam along with them.

By the time the day was fully light, the shadow had become an island, tall and rocky. I kept swimming, a slow breaststroke that I hoped wouldn't worsen my thirst too badly. And finally, when the sun was high in the sky, I reached the island. Ridiculously, after all that, I couldn't get _on _the island. It was all black cliffs that dropped straight down into the water, with no way to climb up. There were a few little ledges in the walls that I could have stood on, but nothing even big enough to sit down.

Terrified that I had gotten my hopes up for nothing, I started swimming around the island. For a long time, there was nothing but the same useless vertical cliff. Then I came to a channel leading not onto, but _into _the island, into a cave. I could see sharks beneath me as I swam down the channel, but they didn't harass me and, after two days in the sun without food or water, I was beyond caring.

The current washed me up inside the cave, and for the first time in two days I was able to stand up on dry land. Except that I couldn't actually stand; I tried, and thirst and exhaustion made my skin tingle and my vision go blurry. I fell to my knees to keep from fainting. Moving like a lizard on a cold night, slow and low to the ground, I crawled deeper into the cave.

It was full of treasure. There was a huge cavern with heaps of gold and silver, pearls and gems, coins and jewelry. And I didn't give a shit about any of it. But hidden in the mess of useless shiny things was some real treasure. Fresh water.

There were holes in the roof of the cavern, and beneath them, in the hollows of the treasure, were puddles of rainwater. It was foul; it was brackish; there were bugs and algae in it; it was nectar from fucking Heaven. I drank, and slept, and drank again, and slept slightly more, and when I awoke I was lucid.

Reasonably comfortable, no longer in danger of immediate death, I had time to take stock. What did I have? My clothing, though not much of it--I was wearing a baggy blue t-shirt and denim shorts, damp and saturated with salt. In my pocket, my dorm keys and my college ID card. A big stone chest in the middle of the cave, but with a lid too heavy to lift. Mounds of precious metals, fat lot of good they did me. It might have a little use; I could use it to build cisterns under the holes in case it rained again, or maybe make a hook or a spear for catching fish. Funny to think that just the night before I'd skipped dinner because I didn't want to eat fishsticks.

Inevitably, as I sat listlessly in a throne of gold, my mind drifted to the things I _didn't_ have. Food. Enough fresh water for more than three or four more days. A way to call for help. Shoes. Something to do besides wait to die. A clue where I was or how I got there. My mommy.

I'll spare you the description of how I cried and prayed and threw rages and considered suicide and cried again. Just rest assured that I did, and at length. But eventually I came to my senses and realised that self-pity wouldn't fill my stomach. I calmed myself and tried to find food. Fishing proved impossible--I didn't have bait for a hook, and the fish were too small and too quick to spear. I did manage to catch two little rock crabs, and they were delicious, though hardly filling. Night fell again after what seemed like an impossibly short time, and I slept.

I awoke to the sound of splashing out in the channel to the cave. Could there be someone there? I jumped to my feet and ran out, screaming, "Help! In here! Help me! Help!"

There was a boat coming in, a large rowboat full of people. Heart melting with relief, I ran out into the water, wading out to meet the boat rather than wait for it.

A man on the boat saw me and yelled back, in English, which was a blessing since I don't speak anything else, "Who are you and how the blazes did ye get here?" He had a thick accent that might have been Scottish. His accent wasn't my main concern at the time, though.

"My name's Holly, and I don't know why I'm here. I'm stranded, I've been here for days, please God help me!"

The men on the boat talked amongst themselves for a moment, then the man yelled to me again. "Swear on your mother's soul that you're alone and mean us no harm."

That was a bit of an odd request, at least the "mother's soul" part, but I was in no position to argue. It was true, anyway. "I swear."

"Walk out until you're up to your neck and turn your back to us."

I did, putting my hands up on the back of my head for good measure. Strong hands grabbed me under my armpits and hauled me up into the boat. I heard one of the men mutter under his breath, "Lord, she's near to naked."

Sitting up and turning to face them, I looked around. The men were dressed in strange, dirty clothing that looked oddly old-fashioned. Their teeth were bad, and their body odor was locker-room thick and a good bit slimier. Their hair was long and greasy, on the ones who had any. I didn't care about any of that. I just slumped down against the side of the boat and started thanking them profusely.

"My God, I'm so glad you got here. You've honestly saved my life. I don't know how I can thank you enough. I thought I was going to die in there, and now... thank you so much, I'm more grateful than I can tell you." I was only babbling a little.

The man who'd yelled to me before came forward and lay a hand on my shoulder, kindly. He had graying hair and a beard that seemed to be thicker on the sides than in the middle, on a round face that seemed almost jolly, though his expression was stern. "What happened to you, lass?" he asked.

"I really don't know," I said. "I just suddenly was in the water and I don't know how I got there." I told him how I'd floated around and found the island.

"And you don't remember anything before that?" one of the other men joined in and asked, a bit suspiciously.

I shook my head. "I remember being at home, and then I was here. If there was anything in between, I don't know."

"Where's home to you, lass?"

"Washington. Er, Washington State. Walla Walla, if you've heard of it. Where am I now?"

I was greeted with a boatful of blank looks. The Scottish man shrugged, and said, "You're on the Isla de Muerta. Where's Washington State?"

I answered him with a blank look of my own. "In the States, the US. The northwest corner. Where exactly is the Isla de Muerta?"

"In the Caribbean, I shouldn't be telling ye more than that." he said. "You're truly not from these parts, are ye? What States are you speaking of?"

I just shook my head, then asked the question I should have asked much more quickly. "What year is this?"

The men were very kind to me. They took me out of the cavern, and up to a ship. And what a ship. It seemed big enough to be its own island, with a forest of masts and rigging rising from the deck, and the whole thing painted an eerie black. As the sailors hauled the dinghy up to the ship and helped me onto the deck, I was still wrapping my head around one thing. It was 1726.

The Scottish man--he had told me his name was Gibbs--took me down below deck, into a chamber with a barred cell. "I'm sorry, lass," he said, "we're not taking you prisoner, but I can't let you have run of the ship until the captain's allowed it."

"I understand," I said as he shut me into the cell. It was mostly true. They didn't know me and I probably seemed insane, but they had saved my life anyway. I couldn't hold it against them if they were a little cautious. "Can I have some food and water, please?"

He nodded. "Aye."

Not long after, he returned with a canteen full of water, a good-sized hunk of bread, some meaty-looking stuff, and the captain. The captain was thin and somehow stranger than the other sailors, with high cheekbones, dark eyes, long beaded dreadlocks, and a sway in his stance. He wasn't at all what I expected a ship captain to look like. He just didn't seem dangerous. I'd always thought ship captains in those days were men to be reckoned with; men who could order you whipped until your bones were lashed bare, or simply work you until scurvy and the roughness of ship life accomplished the same thing. I had not expected a goofy-looking, cute, harmless sort of guy. I took the food and water from Gibbs and took a gulp of the water before extending my hand out to the captain.

He looked slightly surprised, but shook my hand. "Captain Jack Sparrow, pleased to make your acquaintance."

"Holly Black."

He waved Gibbs away and settled down in front of the cell to talk. "Miss Black, you're putting me in a bit of a situation here. Let me explain: this ship, the _Black Pearl_, is a pirate vessel."

I jumped a little at that, but composed myself. It wasn't so bad, really. I mean, they hadn't tried to rape me yet. Maybe they weren't that sort of pirates. I didn't know there was any other sort, actually, but I didn't know all that much about pirates anyway. Couldn't hurt to be polite no matter what sort they were, so I nodded and let him go on.

"You've done no harm to us, Miss Black. And we'll return the favor, savvy? But I still can't have you running around loose on me ship. So you'll just spend a few days relaxing down here until we reach a suitable port, and then you can be on your merry way. All right?"

It wasn't really a question, but I answered anyway. "All right."

"Good then. I'll see what we can do about finding you some clothes," he said, chuckling, and left.

I was getting the impression that these people really weren't used to seeing a woman in shorts. But whatever. I could worry about fashion later. Right now, I just wanted to stuff my face with food. Glorious food.


	2. Captured!

The next couple of days passed uneventfully; no one paid much attention to me, but someone always brought me food and water, which was all I could ask for. They gave me clothing, a white long-sleeved shirt and a pair of trousers that were probably knee breeches on a man but covered my legs down to the ankles. After my time on the island, I just didn't care about sleeping on a damp wooden floor and eating salt pork that was slightly off. It was so strange to think about my life before. Hell, I didn't even _eat _pork before. It's not kosher. And I remembered going into fits of indignation when I had was using my sheets as props in a student film and I had to sleep on a bare mattress for a week.

Student film. Heh. That was one thing I wasn't going to be doing much more of. Along with seeing my family or friends ever again, but I tried not to think about that. It hurt too much to think deeply, especially when I had so much time alone with nothing to do but think, so I tried to focus my self-pity on lighter, sillier things. How I would never watch another episode of _Queer Eye for The Straight Guy_, would never eat another slice of pizza, would never make another phone call, or use another flush toilet, or swallow another antibiotic pill. That last thought came too close to the sort of deep worries I was trying to avoid. I distracted myself by thinking "Nelson's Column is gone," which amused me until I realised that I could never read _Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy _again. Now that was depressing.

Then, late at night on the second day of my time in the brig, I awoke to the sound of cannon fire and screaming. Not anguished screams for the most part, but manly, angry battle screams. We were under attack. Or being attacked. Or something. I couldn't tell, and that was the worst part. I heard feet stomping around the deck above me, and I felt the ship vibrate with the impact of cannon balls, or maybe just with the recoil from firing cannons. In my little cell, there wasn't shit I could do. If a cannonball hit the brig, I was dead, end of story. Didn't matter where I stood or if I covered my head or anything. With that in mind, I curled up in the corner closest to the center of the ship, covering my head.

It went on like that for a while, the sounds of battle seeming to grow louder and louder. Then the door to the brig burst open, and one of the _Pearl_'s sailors, a younger man named Tobin, ran in, unlocked my cell, and handed me a sword. It was short and straight, slightly rusty and far heavier than I expected. I touched the blade, and found that it was indeed sharp.

Tobin grabbed me by my collar. "We've been boarded and we need all the hands we can get. Go up there and fight." I nodded, but he wasn't done, and jerked my collar painfully tight around my throat. "Don't betray us," he said. "Pirates are vengeful men, and I can promise you that if you turn sides, even if none of us lives, you will soon come to a very bad end."

I muttered something about how I'd never do that, and then Tobin let go of my collar and grabbed my wrist instead, half-dragging me out the door, up a ladder, and into utter chaos.

On deck, men were fighting, with swords flying everywhere. I couldn't tell who was on which side. There was another ship pulled up beside the _Black Pearl_, a pirate ship with the Jolly Roger flying from its mast. The smell of blood was strong in the air, and I saw a dead man lying on the deck. Tobin let go of me and ran into the fray; I just stood there, shell-shocked, hanging onto my sword cluelessly, with no idea what to do. There wasn't even anywhere to run. Then a man came at me with a sword.

I took a class in fencing once, and I wasn't too bad at it. But our swords weighed half a kilo, and we stayed in a straight line and didn't go for low blows or head shots. None of that applied to this. The man swinging at me was huge, and I was terrified, but I tried to parry.

My blade hit his, all right, but didn't block it. The sword kept going, slipping over the guard, and slicing into my wrist. I screamed in surprise more than pain, hardly feeling anything. My sword fell from my hand, blood ran down my arm, the man raised his weapon again, and I did the worst possible thing for that situation. I fell down.

The man could have killed me without hardly trying, but he didn't. Instead, he picked me up by my good arm and dragged me across the deck to a plank lying between the two ships, then shoved me onto the plank so hard that I staggered and nearly fell into the water. A man on the other side of the plank caught me and hauled me onto the deck of the ship. I was shoved from one pair of rough hands to another. Someone quickly tied my hands and feet and dropped me on the deck.

The noise of the battle went on, more distantly. Pirates ran all around me, but there was no fighting on this ship. My right hand felt strangely cold. I pulled my bound hands in front of my face and looked at them. There was blood smeared all over, though it wasn't a fast or spurting bleed. And my right hand was just... taken apart. The forearm looked normal, and so did the fingers. Everything in between was a red, pink, and white mess so alien and confusing that it didn't seem like it could possibly be part of me.

Something landed with a heavy thump on the deck next to me. I rolled over and looked, and it was Anamaria, the only woman on the _Black Pearl_'s crew. She was tied like I was, and seemed unconscious. I poked her with my foot. She didn't react. The battle went on.

I heard a rough voice yell, "We got him, boys! All hands back to ship!" Pirates ran across the plank, then pulled it up into the ship. "Hard to starboard! Pull away!" Several people repeated the orders, and I felt the ship lean over as it moved away from the _Pearl_.

"Prisoners in the brig!" someone yelled. "Get them out of the way for now." I was still in a daze as I was dragged across the deck, down a steep set of stairs, and literally thrown into a cell much like the one I had inhabited on the _Pearl_. The pirates threw Anamaria in after me, and then, to my shock, Jack Sparrow.

"All hands muster on deck!" a command came from above, and our captors obeyed, leaving the three of us still tied up as well as locked into the dark little cell.

"Anamaria!" Jack yelled. "Come on, woman, wake up." She didn't. Jack turned to me, sudden fury on his face. "You."

I shook my head and showed him my wound. "If I were with them, I wouldn't have this." My hand still felt cold and tingly more than it actually hurt. So did my whole body.

He nodded grimly. "True enough. Now, if it's not too much trouble," he said, and scooted around Anamaria to hold his bound hands in front of me. The knots had been hastily made, and with my teeth and left hand I managed to undo them. He untied his own feet, then freed me and Anamaria. She was still breathing, but that was all. Jack pinched her cheek, and she didn't stir.

"What's going on?" I asked.

Jack shrugged. "We happen to be guests of Captain John Biskin on the good ship _Perilous. _I'm to be tortured for the location of the Isla de Muerta, and you ladies are to provide companionship for the crew."

I hugged my wounded hand close to me. The pain was just starting to really bite in. I didn't have anything helpful to say. But that never stopped me before. "What are we going to do?" I asked.

"Well, I suppose I shall be tortured and killed and you shall be raped. Unless you have a better plan."

I have a very firm policy of not crying where anyone can see me. So I held my breath in and frantically wiped the tears from my eyes before they could run down my face.

"It's not as bad as all that, love. I've been captured many a time, but I've never been killed." He thought about that for a moment. "Yet."

I sort of laughed even though it wasn't funny. For a while we were quiet, just sitting in the cell. Jack noticed my hand was still bleeding, and he undid the bandana around his head and tied it around my hand.

"That's a bit better, eh?" he asked. "You needn't worry any more. I have a plan."

"What is it?"

He shook his head. "Best if you don't know. But whatever happens, just go along with it. Trust me."

"Oh, well, I'll be sure to, then." Even I'm not sure if I was being sarcastic or not.

Soon after, three pirates came down into the brig. Two were big square-bodied lugs with a lot of scars, and one was wearing a very nice hat. It wasn't hard to divine which one was Captain Biskin. Although, honestly, he was pretty much a big, square-bodied, scarred lug himself. But the hat gave him away. I wondered if pirate captains ever gave really nice hats to random crew members, just for a decoy. I also wondered if shock was affecting my thinking a little.

"Jack Sparrow," Biskin said, and Jack tipped an imaginary hat to him. "These gentlemen would like to have a discussion with you regarding the location of the Isla de Muerta." The goons on either side of him smiled disconcertingly. I half expected Biskin to slip into an Italian accent and make Jack an offer he couldn't refuse.

"No need for discussion, gentlemen," Jack said. "I'll be more than glad to provide you with a bearing to the Isla."

"Yes?" Biskind asked, his tone suggesting that he didn't expect a straight answer.

And he didn't get one. "On certain conditions, of course. The women are not to be harmed, and I..."

Biskind laughed. "You're my prisoner. There will be no conditions. You'll give us the bearing, or we'll convince you to give it to us."

Jack shrugged. "Fine then. The Isla de Muerta is roughly seventy miles south-south-west by west of our current position. I should warn you, however, that it's rather a tricky passage to get into the island, and if you don't know what you're doing you're liable to end up smashed on the rocks."

"So what should we do?"

Jack did a very poor imitation of thinking hard. "You know, I'm not sure exactly what I do, I just know that it must be done in a very particular way. It's quite difficult to describe without having it all in front of me."

Biskin sighed. "You're only buying yourself two more days of life with this ridiculous stalling, Jack."

"True, but I believe in living every day to the very fullest."

"Whatever you like," Biskin said. "Harris, O'Neal, please escort the young lady to my cabin."

I froze, terrified. Jack just chuckled. "She's a fine little tidbit, I'll grant, but there is one thing I think you should know."

"And what, pray tell, is that?" Biskin asked, exasperated.

Jack gestured at a nasty-looking open sore on his jawline. "This one isn't so bad, but the other ones itch something fierce. I'd hate to see you in the same sort of suffering."

"I don't believe you and I don't care."

"Fine then. I've warned you, that's all I can do. Don't mind me when your bits start turning black and falling off. I'm already rotted pretty far away, would you like to see?" Jack asked, hand on the button of his breeches.

Biskin made a disgusted face. "That's fine, thank you. I still don't believe you, but you've managed to kill my appetite for such things. I hope you're happy."

"Delighted," Jack said as the pirates headed out and slammed the door behind them. So was I. In a relative sort of way. My hand burned.


	3. Cursed!

The next two days were not happy ones. I spent most of them in a sort of stupor, never able to sleep, never quite awake. There was no food or water. Anamaria did not die, and did not wake. Jack just lay peacefully in the corner of the cell, stretched out like a cat in the sun, as if he were safe on his own ship taking a quick nap. He never once gave any sign that he was uncomfortable or upset. Maybe he really wasn't.

But as I said, I was never all the way awake after the first few hours. My hand blossomed from the brief reprieve of shock all the way into full-blown agony. It was never quite bad enough to justify screaming, but thinking clearly was out of the question. At one point I begged Jack to just chop it off, but he asked me, "With what?", which was a devastatingly reasonable question.

In the late afternoon of the second day, Captain Biskin came down to the brig again, along with two flunkies. "Jack," he said, "we're at the damned channel. You'll guide us through."

"Aye, I will," Jack answered, not looking up. "And then you'll be free to kill me and have your pick of the treasure, cursed and uncursed alike."

"Cursed?" Biskin asked, hesitating.

"Cursed! Have you not heard of the torment of Barbossa and his crew? They blithely looted the treasure of the Isla de Muerta, heeding no warnings, and they were punished soundly for it. Ten years they went, unable to eat, to drink, to make love, to so much as smell the salt of the sea. Only death freed them." Jack paused and looked up at Biskin, a merry little smile on his face. "Of course, it's not all cursed, so as long as you're very lucky and happen to only take the right treasure, you'll have no trouble at all."

Biskin shrugged. "And you buy yourself another hour or two of life. Sooner or later you'll be out of silly excuses you can cower behind while thinking yourself so terribly clever. You haven't outsmarted me, Jack, not once. I've only kept you alive because it costs me nothing and I get a little help out of it. The ladies are only alive because I don't like to shed female blood, so I'll maroon them instead.

"I know I'm going to kill you soon enough, and you know it too. The only difference is that you're too stupid and cocky to understand that that means I'm really going to kill you."

"I suppose so," Jack said. "Now, will you take this stupid and cocky man up to the helm to guide you through the channel, or do you have another grandiose speech to make about the bloody obvious?"

Biskin nodded to his flunkies, and they opened the cell, grabbed Jack, and marched him up the stairs far more roughly than necessary, leaving me still locked in the cell with Anamaria.

About an hour later, three pirates came down into the brig. None of them was Jack. One took me, and the others carried Anamaria, and we all loaded into a longboat with Jack and Biskin and a whole bunch of pirates. The sun was low above the watery horizon, its white light beginning to bleed orange and yellow, as we rowed into the Isla de Muerta.

I tried to pay attention to what was going on, but my thoughts kept turning back to my hand. The bandanna around it was completely soaked with blood, and even through the cloth I could see that my hand was not in the shape a hand ought to be in. All this from one sword blow, and one I had blocked at that. No wonder pirates tended to have missing body parts. At least in movies. Now that I thought about it, the pirates I'd actually seen in person were mostly intact. Then again, they were huge men who'd spent years learning to wield weapons. Not small confused teenage girls whose only knowledge of swordplay was "pointy end goes in the other guy."

The pirates tied Jack and my hands behind our backs before prodding us out of the boat. Anamaria they just flopped down onto the bank, her legs in the water. Jack sauntered up the pile of treasure, seeming to head in no particular direction. One of Biskin's lackeys twitched toward him, but seemed to decide that there was no harm in letting him wander around.

Jack started to talk, in a slow mumble, so it seemed like he was just background noise. "Near all of this treasure on the ground here is... well, I'd say it's mostly... safe to take. The only stuff you really need to worry about are some of these statues... the ones with the Indian writing on them... it looks like square little people and lizards and things... and I wouldn't touch the idols either..." He rambled on, and the pirates started to ignore him and pick through the treasure themselves. Only two people kept their eyes on him: me and Biskin. And as Jack talked, he walked, with a staggering amble that seemed to go absolutely nowhere. But with each drunk-looking weave, he managed to get just an inch closer to the stone chest in the center of the cave.

"And one more thing," Jack said, when he was nearly at the chest, though his back was to it and the lid still on. "Don't _ever _touch these little trinkets in here..." Before the words were all the way out of his mouth, he'd scooted the lid of the chest back, slipped his hand in, and grabbed a coin. I heard it clink back into the chest, and then the lid was back on, and Jack was staggering away casually, keeping up his mumbling patter.

"These curses can be really terrible I hear... really awful... Barbossa's men were quite miserable when they were cursed, no food or drink you know... and no pleasant times with women either if you know what I mean..." Jack had succeeded in getting absolutely no one to pay attention to him. Even I barely registered his voice; I was more worried about how horribly ironic it was that, after all that, I would end up dying right back where I started. At least I thought it was ironic. It might have been merely coincidental. I can never get that definition quite right.

Ironic or not, I had just been sitting on the ground near Anamaria moping, and so I didn't see what happened when the commotion started. When I looked up, Jack's hands were untied, he had a sword in his hand, and Biskind was dead on the ground with his throat slashed. The pirates charged him all at once, and he stood his ground. He only winced when they rammed swords straight through his body. I screamed.

At least two pirates turned at my scream, and those two died at Jack's hand. The others slashed and stabbed at him again, and again almost nothing happened. He looked uncomfortable being turned into a large pincushion for very large pins, but he didn't start spurting blood or screaming or dying, as is customary for people who get run through with swords. I wasn't sure what was going on, but I figured that it wouldn't be long until the pirates caught on and ran for it.

Couldn't let that happen, so I went to the boat we had come in on, now empty and ignored while everyone tried to fight with Jack. I couldn't row it away with my hands tied and only one good hand anyway, so I just leaned my back against the boat from outside and shoved it out into the water. It coasted away for a moment, then drifted back in, carried on the current. Crap.

I went to plan two, which was, to be fair, really less of a plan and more of a random impulse. Kicking the gunwale on one side down with my foot, I managed to flip the boat upside down. Once it was flipped, I jumped, hard, feet together, legs rigid, onto the very point of the keel. Sure enough, it splintered. I fell through it, the splinters scraping at my legs, and stuck there, kneeling on the ground with a girdle of broken wood around my waist.

The pirates who were still standing looked at me. They looked at Jack. They dropped their weapons. Jack started pulling blades out of his body.

Unfortunately, in addiction to forcing a surrender, I'd put everyone into a sticky situation. Without a boat, we were all stuck on the Isla de Muerta together. Eventually, the crew back on the _Perilous_ would send out another boat, but what then? Anamaria and I weren't suddenly invincible, as far as I could tell, so it would be a bit risky for us to get on a small boat with angry pirates whose captain and buddies had just been killed. But if we took the boat for ourselves, we'd be marooning the pirates on the Isla, which wasn't right either--most of them had done nothing wrong but join Biskin's crew, and marooning would be a horrible death, especially with bodies lying around. They would eat each other.

"All of you lily-livered scalywags! On your bellies, hands behind your heads! If you move, it's at risk of your life!" Jack barked at the surrendering pirates, and they obeyed. "Holly, get yourself and Anamaria over here," he said standing in a tidepool off to the side of the cave, but pointing at the chest. I clambered out of the boat, grabbed Anamaria under her arms as best I could with my hurting hand, and dragged her up the pile of treasure. It was slow going but Jack came and took most of her weight, and then the three of us were around the chest. "Take a coin," Jack mouthed at me, not making a sound. As quietly as I could, trying to avoid clinking, I took one.

As soon as the coin crossed the threshold of the chest, something happened. Nearly all the pain in my hand disappeared. But so did every other sensation. I couldn't feel the ground under my feet, the shirt on my back, the dampness of the water soaking my stockings. I could still tell they were there, but it had none of the texture of touch, it was just a blank awareness that I was in contact with something. The other thing I felt was need. I had been bitterly hungry and thirsty to begin with, but my desire for food and water was painfully sharpened, though less weakening than it had been. I was suddenly, unaccountably, uncomfortably horny. And more than anything, I wanted to touch. I wanted to sweep Jack or Anamaria or, hell, one of the pirates up in my arms and just feel the warmth of their skin. But I knew instantly it wouldn't do any good; I could embarrass myself all I liked, and I still wouldn't feel a damn thing.

Jack gestured for me to put the coin back, and I did, laying it down softly. "And her," he said silently, indicating Anamaria. I hauled her up to the chest, and Jack put her limp hand in the coins, lifted a coin with it, took the coin from her, and put it back. As he was doing this, she woke up.

"Bloody hell, Jack!" she nearly screamed. "What the blazes is going on?"

"That," Jack said, "is a very long story, and one I promise you will hear once we are more comfortably situated."

Anamaria looked at him and shut her mouth with an effort of will.

"Good ladies," Jack began, "I do not wish to maroon an entire crew of men. Nor do I wish to travel any farther in the care of these scoundrels. So we're going to... go for a walk." He waved toward the water lapping at the golden banks of treasure, and with his other hand slipped the lid of the stone chest shut.

Anamaria and I traded blank looks with each other before sharing them with Jack.

"Come on," he said, marching down toward the water. "Take some swag, we might need it." He stuffed some pieces of gold in his pockets, and Anamaria followed suit. I didn't have pockets, but I threw a couple of necklaces around my neck. Then Jack stepped into the water, wading straight down, not trying to swim, just letting himself sink until he was completely submerged.

"So it's true," Anamaria muttered, and followed him a bit more hesitantly. I followed her, even more hesitantly. It was one of those situations that I didn't dare think about too carefully for fear that it would crumble instantly under the touch of logic. I just went along. So I stepped into the water. Going up to my ankles was easy, so was my knees, really everything up to my neck wasn't a problem. That's when I froze. I couldn't put my head underwater. There was just no way. I had nearly drowned a few days ago, and invulnerable or not, I wasn't doing that again.

I didn't get a lot of time to stand there quivering. As soon as she realised I was going to be a pussy about it, Anamaria grabbed me by the front of my shirt and dragged me down into the depths. I yelped a little, and for the second time that week, my lungs filled with water.

I won't tell you it didn't hurt. It felt like the worst case of bronchitis you ever had, and I couldn't even cough. But after a moment of thrashing around with Anamaria tackling me, my body finally figured out that I wouldn't die of it. Breathing water was a little achy and a lot salty, but it seemed to be working out fine besides that. And it was easier for me to walk on the seafloor with water in my lungs, I didn't have to fight buoyancy. I opened my eyes, trotted awkwardly for a moment to catch up with Jack, and we began our journey, a long march on the bottom of the sea.


	4. Underwater!

It was a long way and I didn't know where we were going. Obviously, I couldn't talk. So I just trusted Jack and followed him; he seemed to know exactly where he was headed. On the way, I enjoyed the sights. I had been skin diving before, but I was always limited by how much my lungs could hold and how deep I could dive. Normally, as well, being more than six meters down would put painful pressure on my eardrums, but with my lungs and sinuses filled with water, that wasn't a problem. So as I trudged slowly across the sea floor, I was free to look around almost comfortably.

We were deep, deep underwater. Hammerhead sharks swam above us, swarms of them moving in lazy arcs, but always moving. To stop, even in their sleep, was to die. I could sympathize sometimes. Other, smaller fish, more carefree, flitted around the rocks and pits on the sea floor. A needle-nosed speckled green moray eel slithered past my leg, the one long fin on its back rippling. High above us, I could see the shadow of the _Perilous_, and down on the floor not far from where we walked, the anchor. We walked right past it.

Then we entered a garden of kelp, swaying in the current like grass in the wind, each stalk reaching nearly to the surface. It seemed to go on forever, and it was like walking through a forest sometimes, when the stalks were sparse and we could step between them. Other times it was like a den of snakes, when the leaves tangled and coiled around us and we had to rip our limbs free for every step.

Night fell, and we were still in the forest. Before it got too dark to see, Jack took Anamaria's hand, and I took hers, so that we could find each other in the inky water. I clutched Anamaria's hand as hard as I could without digging my nails into it; I was suddenly terrified of what would happen if I lost her and was left all alone at the bottom of the ocean, in the dark.

I should have wanted to sleep at some point, but not only didn't I want to, I felt like I couldn't have if I'd tried. Water in my lungs was one thing, but the hunger and exhaustion and need of all sorts were beginning to wear on me. But there was nothing I could do about it, so I did nothing. We marched all through the night.

And then, in the morning, we were at the foot of a mountain, or so it seemed. A great rocky slope rose above us, going all the way up to the surface. We started to climb. In a way, it was the best mountain climb I've ever done, because the water made everything easier. If a rock was too big to climb in the normal way, we could simply kick our legs and swim over it. Filled with water, we didn't have the buoyancy to just swim straight up, but we were still far lighter than we would have been on land. If we jumped, we could easily clear twice our height.

The mountain seemed a peak to rival Mount Rainier from underwater, but when we reached the top, it was just a very small island. Standing on the beach looking across, I could see the sea on the other side through the sparse grove of palm trees. Though none of us were standing when we first crawled up out of the water; we ended up on our hands and knees, coughing over and over, vomiting out seawater.

Jack, annoyingly chipper in his off-center way, recovered immediately, while Anamaria and I were still on our bellies in the sand hacking. "There's a fishing village on the other end of this island. I expect they'll have a boat we can commandeer."

"Or buy," Anamaria said, pulling herself up to stand beside him. "The world's not entirely yours for the taking, Jack."

"It is, it is! Or why else are we pirates?"

"So we can take the ill-gotten wealth of the fat and lazy of the colonies. Not the only boat of some poor lonely fisherman. It's not pleasant waking up and finding yourself without a boat you worked for years to afford," Anamaria said with an edge to her voice, and I got the idea there was a history behind that comment.

I caught up with them just in time to see Jack roll his eyes at her. "You didn't work for years to afford that thing, you worked for years to afford rum and trinkets and pretty clothes and the boat as hardly an afterthought."

"Hmph," Anamaria grunted, rubbing her head. I didn't blame her. She'd just tried to win an argument with Jack. After just three days with the man I could see that was a losing game. "The fishermen here didn't. And you still owe me an explanation for all this!"

"In good time," Jack said, and started off down the beach. Anamaria followed him, and I tagged along behind, feeling particularly invisible. At least no one was mad at me.

We rounded a bend in the beach before long, and there they were, five small thatch huts in half a circle. Three short, dark-skinned women sat in the center of the circle chatting, with quite a few chickens and small children running around. Apparently the men were out to sea. There was one boat, barely bigger than a canoe but with a sail, pulled up on the shore. Jack sauntered straight toward the boat as if he owned it, and was nearly stepping in when one of the women stopped him. She shouted something in Spanish.

I don't know much Spanish, but Jack and Anamaria did, and after much yelling and bargaining between the two of them and all three women, Jack took the necklaces off my neck--without asking me, but I wasn't surprised--and handed them out to the women. And with that, we were in the boat, and heading out to sea.

"You think they'll still be at Coral Point?" Anamaria asked Jack, fussing with the sail.

"It's worth a look," he answered "It's on the way to Tortuga anyways."

I wished I knew how to sail. It would've saved me from just sitting in the bottom of the boat trying to stay out of their way while they adjusted ropes and maneuvered the sail as if they did that sort of thing every day. Well, they _did _do that sort of thing every day. I really wasn't a part of this world, was I? Funny thing was, I was probably better suited for it than the average modern American teenager. I'd lived on a tropical island when my father was in the army, so I was used to the heat and knew my way around a reef. I'd been on boats many times before, so I didn't get seasick or lose my balance from the waves. Hell, I'd even worked at a dock the summer before--well, the summer three hundred years after, but that was too confusing--moving boats and doing basic repairs. Pity none of them had been sailboats.

"So what the blazes just happened, Jack?" Anamaria asked. "You said you'd explain when we had time, and right now, we've got nothing but time."

So Jack explained. He told her everything I already knew about what had happened, and talked about a curse that I hadn't known about, and wouldn't have believed if I hadn't just walked thirty miles underwater without drowning. And then I asked where the curse had come from, and I got quite a story about what had happened two years before. Two stories, actually, because Jack kept going too far with tales of his heroism, and Anamaria kept reining him in and insisting that she knew the way things had _really _happened.

"So Mr. Turner and Miss Swann are now Mr. and Mrs. Turner, and I am now once again captain of the _Black Pearl_," Jack finished. "So everything went right in the end, really."

"Biskin's crew still knows where the Isla de Muerta is," I blurted out. "Won't you lose all the treasure?" Yeah, I'm slow on the uptake sometimes, I know.

Jack and Anamaria both laughed. "They know where the Isla de Muerta _was_."

"Was?" I asked, being slow again.

Jack took a little compass from his pocket. It wasn't pointing north, and it wasn't pointing the direction we came from, either. "The Isla is where ever it pleases to be," he said, sounding a little distant himself. "There's only two of these compasses in the world, and the Turners hold the other for safekeeping."

"Which is damned stupid if you ask me," Anamaria said.

"Which is why I didn't," Jack snapped back. Bitchy, bitchy. Not that I blamed him, or her for that matter. If I weren't still a little bit terrified of them I'd be doing plenty of bitching myself, considering the situation.

They just glared at each other for a moment, and I interrupted awkwardly, "So, we just find the _Black Pearl_ and go back to the Isla de Muerta and bleed on the treasure and everything's cool then, right?" Jack raised his eyebrow just enough to remind me that I'd said something stupid. "I mean, everything will be okay?" Shit, shit, shit, no comprehension. It was probably hard enough for them to understand me through my thick American accent, and there I was babbling slang at them that wouldn't be invented for another two hundred years. "Good, everything will be good, that's what I mean. No more curse?"

"Aye, no more curse," Anamaria said. "We'll be free people, free to eat and drink and all those lovely things." Her voice softened for the first time since she'd woken up from her coma.

"Lovely things," Jack echoed, and his eye caught hers for just half a second, but I noticed. Ah. That explained why they were so comfortable bickering with each other.

For a while we just sailed. The wind was wonderful--fast enough that we were moving at a good pace, but not so rough that we had to deal with big swells. Now and then Jack and Anamaria would do something with the sail and the ropes. I just lay on my back in the stern, soaking in the sun, trailing my good hand in the water, wishing I could actually feel either of these things. 

I didn't feel my right hand either, but that was for the best. I thought of unwrapping it, but best to leave well enough alone. Clearly I wasn't going to have the use of the hand anyway, so what was the use of stressing myself by looking at the horrible mess of bone and tendon and probably gangrene under the bandanna? It was going to end up needing to be amputated anyway. Yuck. I'd have been more upset, but I was still in a bit of shock over being in 1726 and under a magic curse. Anyway, what did I use two hands for? Touch typing and tying my shoes. Well, I was wearing sandals, and if I happened to run into a computer terminal here in the eighteenth century, I'd just have to hunt and peck.

"It'll be alright," Anamaria said, noticing me staring at my hand. "You'll learn to get along."

"It's not that," I said. "Well, it is, but... I was just thinking that something like this happened to me once in my own time and they had it stitched back together in a few minutes. I was using my hand again in two weeks."

"Your time?" Jack asked, never afraid to butt in to someone else's conversation. "You were going on about that a bit when you first got on the _Pearl_, but we just reckoned you were mad with hunger and thirst. Is it true?"

"It's true, I'm from the year two thousand and four. It's a very different time. We have so many things that just don't exist now. And most of the stuff that exists now, won't then. Like pirates," I said with a smile. No piracy in the twenty-first century." Well, technically there was MP3 piracy, of which I was practically Captain Kidd, but I didn't feel like going completely over their heads yet again.

"Then I'm happy to have been born when I was," Jack said, plopping down on the deck next to me. "But what do you have that we don't?"

I hadn't realised that was going to be such a difficult question to answer. How do you explain a world of Internet porn and reality television and international terrorism to a man in knee breeches who's never had so much as a drink of Coca-Cola? Well, come to think of it, he _was _an international terrorist, so he might understand that part. But still.

"Well, we have machines that do almost anything people can, and a lot of things people can't. We have machines that let people fly from place to place, that can take pictures instantly and then send them all around the world, that..." Shit. What _did _the twenty-first century have? I'd taken so much of it for granted. "We have lights that work without oil or gas, and boats that don't need the wind to run, and carriages that don't need horses." I went on, trying to keep everything in some sort of frame of reference for them, which was extremely difficult. Especially since every time they asked me why or how something worked, all I could do was shrug and say I didn't know, it just did. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," Arthur C. Clarke would say two hundred and fifty years later. I was starting to understand that from my point of view, almost everything in the year 2004 was magic. Shame on me for just skipping to the wooly mammoth stories in _The Way Things Work_.

Fortunately, Jack and Anamaria didn't really care if I could explain cathode ray tubes or semiconductors. They were much more interested by my mention of motorboats. Specifically, they wanted to know how to build a motor for the _Black Pearl._ Which left me stuck, because I didn't know, of course. I knew how to oil boat motors and gas them and do minor repairs and scrub duckweed out of their crevices, but _make _one? They might as well have asked me to build a computer out of bubblegum and paperclips. Except, of course, that the 1700s didn't even havebubblegum or paperclips.

The conversation went nowhere, but fortunately, the boat went somewhere. We were, according to Jack, only a few hours from Coral Point, when the sun set and the moon came out.


	5. Skeletal!

I looked up, and all of a sudden Jack and Anamaria were gone. There were skeletons in the boat with me! And well, I've always had this weird little phobia about being trapped alone in a small space with rotting skeletons that stand and move around on their own. I screamed and clung to the mast, climbing up it like a frightened squirrel. I looked down at the skeletons over my shoulder--and saw that my shoulder was bone. So was my whole body. Dear God, I was a skeleton. A small panicked skeleton clinging to the mast and quivering.

"It's all right, girl," one of the skeletons called to me in Anamaria's voice. "It's the curse, remember?"

Oh right. The curse. Well, fine then. I was totally and completely fine with being a living skeleton with soft blackened bits of putrid flesh hanging off my bones, as long as there was a good reason. I climbed back down carefully, staring at my hand. My bony white hand with bits of gristle still between the small bones. Even my clothing had become tattered and rotten. And so, too, had the bandanna over my right hand.

It didn't hurt at all now, whatever that meant. And without flesh, it couldn't be too gruesome, could it? So I sat down on the deck and gingerly unwrapped the bandanna. My hand fell off.

It hit the deck with such a perfectly deadpan thump that I almost wanted to laugh. Except that I had just, you know, lost my hand. The other skeletons turned at the noise, and it took them a moment to realise what had happened.

I felt dizzy and nauseous, which didn't make much sense considering that, strictly speaking, I didn't have a stomach. But I knew that if I let myself start to break down there'd be no going back. So I shrugged it off. "I guess that takes care of that," I said airily, picked the hand up, and, God help me, tossed it into the ocean.

"Why'd you do that?" the skeleton that must have been Jack almost screamed. "Get it back!"

It had sunk, the water was dark, and the boat had moved on. It was a needle in a haystack at that point. I looked at Jack and shrugged. "I don't have any more use for it anyway."

"No... you don't... wounds _heal _when you come out of the moonlight," Jack said, still astonished at me. "It might have healed back on!"

Well, shit. I tried to cover my face with my hands the way I do when I've just done something very stupid, but that didn't work out well. I couldn't even shut my eyes. "Oh God, I'm an idiot. My hand... Oh God."

Anamaria came over and put her arm on my shoulder in a comforting way. Except that it was cold bone that touched me, so I nearly jumped out of my skin. Come to think of it, I already was out of my skin. "It's done now, eh? Don't worry yourself too much. Probably wouldn't have healed anyway. Least this way it'll heal clean."

"That's right," Jack said, backpedaling with all his might. "Matter of fact, one of Barbossa's pirates had an eye missing, and that didn't come back even after the moonlight."

I sighed. Not sure how I was doing that without lungs, but I was already talking without lungs and moving without muscles, so it clearly wasn't my place to decide what was and wasn't possible. "Forget it," I said, sounding brittle. "Just forget it, okay? It can't be fixed now. I've got one hand, and I'm fine with that." I picked up the bandanna and handed it to Jack. "Here, you can have this back."

He pulled away from it delicately. "I don't want it back." He had a point. It was pretty well soaked with blood and glop. I dropped it into the ocean too.

Skeletal, one-handed, no longer able to disbelieve anything, I was saved from utter insanity by the appearance of Coral Point--and the _Black Pearl_. It was beached, leaning far to one side, and the crew lay on the sandy beach not far from it, asleep.

There was a guard posted, though, and as soon as we were close enough to see them, they were close enough to see us. Distantly, I could hear yelling as the crew woke up. Jack clambered up the mast, perched on top of the beam supporting the sail, and waved his hat at them. "It's me, Jack!" he yelled.

"Jack!" The man on guard--I didn't know his name--didn't seem particularly fazed by the whole skeleton thing.

So we landed there, the crew woke up, we were welcomed back, we explained what had happened to us, so on and so forth. They'd just finished repairs on the _Pearl _and would drag her back out to sea in the morning, and then we could return to the Isla de Muerta and break our curses.

Ever practical, the men of the crew went back to sleep almost immediately. Jack, Anamaria and I couldn't, so we just lay on the beach, hands folded behind our heads, looking up at the stars.

"Funny the way things always work out, isn't it?" Jack said to no one in particular. "When I left England, I would have laughed if anyone had told me I'd so much as let my hair grow long. And if you said I'd be a living skeleton lying on the beach with a pirate crew and the ship I command..."

"I don't think anyone expects to become a pirate," Anamaria mused. "It just happens. You get poor enough or mad enough or alone enough and it happens."

"Aye. Just like falling in love."

Anamaria laughed, not completely kindly. "And you'd know?"

"I'm already a pirate," Jack said. "Having that _and_ love would just be... greedy."

"Or maybe you're just so greedy you keep all your love to yourself."

"Maybe," Jack said, unflappable.

"So, er, what were you before you were pirates?" I asked lamely, trying to break the tension. The moon was setting on the horizon, and our skin was coming back, translucent at first, but thickening. I looked over at Jack, and his body looked like an X-ray, bones draped with the ghostly outlines of flesh.

"A cartographer," he said with a laugh. "A bloody mapmaker."

Anamaria was quiet for a moment, and then answered softly, "I wasn't anything before. I was just a girl. I don't know what my life would have been otherwise."

We just lay there on the beach, staring up at the sky, for a long time. The moon set completely, and we became fully human again. I had a clean, healed stump on the end of my right arm--not as nice as a hand, but a damn sight better than a painful gangrenous wound.

At sunrise the crew awoke, and immediately set about the task of hauling the _Pearl _out to sea. The boat was huge, but they tied ropes to the front and put levers in the back and as Jack barked commands and Anamaria and Gibbs echoed him, it moved. I was holding a rope of my own, and when the command came to heave, I heaved. It was hot, rough, hard work, and the pirates didn't complain or falter. They just grunted, and put every sinew against the ship, and with the creak of wood and the stink of sweat, the _Pearl _crawled down the sand and lifted up into the water.

As soon as everyone was on the ship and everything was in order, the pirates locked me down in the brig.


	6. Uncursed!

Of course. Why would a few days together and a couple airy conversations mean anything to Jack compared to the safety of his ship and crew? I was still a stranger who couldn't be trusted. They set me free to break the curse, at least. Jack, Anamaria, and I rowed back out to that godforsaken little treasure cave together. The two pirates took the obsidian knife from the chest and pricked their fingers, dripping blood onto the coins.

Anamaria handed me the knife and I cut a slit on my forearm, below the stump, and squeezed out a little blood. When it splashed on the coins, spottily dulling their golden sheen, everything felt different. My hunger and thirst and need eased. I felt as if I was back in my skin again--my senses returned, and I was very conscious of the smell of the ocean and the feel of my clothes on my skin.

"Time to go, Holly," Jack said softly, breaking my small trance.

I gestured at the treasure around me. "Can I take some?" I asked.

"A little. You can't live off it no matter how much you take; you'll need some sort of occupation."

I dropped the knife into the chest and walked down toward the boat we had come in on, scooping up a few gems in my hand as I went. "I'll work," I said earnestly, but out of the corner of my eye I was looking at the same thing they were: the useless stump of my right wrist. "I'll do any work I can."

"We'll talk back on the _Pearl_," Jack said.

And we did. Back in the brig, in privacy, he could be honest with me. "Your hand isn't the problem, love," he said quietly, almost forlorn. "You're just not made to serve on a pirate crew. You've no knowledge of sailing or battle. And I'm sorry, I truly am, but the _Black Pearl_ is a tight ship. We can't afford to just keep you around. And you wouldn't want us to. I'll see you to a safe home in Tortuga."

"I thought you said I wasn't suited to Tortuga," I said. Unspoken, that I wasn't suited to anywhere. Just being a single woman without a family would probably condemn me to beggary in this world; add in that I had one hand and no skills, and I was damn lucky that Jack was even bothering to feed me.

"Aye, but I know you better now, and you'll survive there." It was a compliment, of sorts. Or a way to cover that he hadn't been able to think of anywhere else to ditch me. "You'll have work and food and a place to sleep, I'll make sure of it."

I understood what he was getting at. "I'm going to be a whore." My voice was as bitter as dry heaves.

"It's not a shame. You'll make honest money. And what do you do? Comfort lonely sailors far from their homes. If piracy can be a noble profession, so can whoring." The way he said it was so matter-of-fact that I almost believed him.

"Noble. Fucking strangers for money." I might have hit him if there weren't bars between us, even though it wasn't really him I was angry at.

Jack just nodded, and left.

Over the four days it took the _Pearl _to reach Tortuga, I cried a little. But hell. I'd have a job and a home. Not my dream job, sure, but my dream job was film director and I had a funny feeling that wasn't going to happen anyway. So fuck it. Fuck dignity, fuck syphilis, fuck unwanted pregnancies, fuck everything I ever hoped or wanted for my life because I needed to survive and this was the only way open to me. It was like drinking the filthy water in the cave, only forever.

As it turned out, it wasn't so bad. In Tortuga Jack brought me to a man called Lauro, who, after a bit of quibbling over my missing hand, took me in. I joined the four other girls working in Lauro's house, and Jack left.

So that's where I stayed, and what I became. For no reason at all, I went from shooting films in Walla Walla to turning tricks in eighteenth-century Tortuga. Funny the way things turn out, isn't it?

I'm not unhappy. My job may not be cookie-dough taste-testing, but it's not the worst; I only work nights, Lauro's not a cruel man, and the other girls and I have some good times together. There's good food and plenty to drink and life goes by fast and fun. And hey, I always wanted to live by the beach.


End file.
